Monday, March 25, 2013

(oops... just realized I forgot to publish this post a couple months ago! :))
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This past Saturday Lukas and I ran the Phunt trail race with friends of ours from work. The Trail Dawgs, a local trail running group in our area, put on this awesome FREE trail race every year - aided by volunteers and donations (food and water from the runners participating). There is also a food drive for the PA and DE food banks and any monetary donations go to charity too ~ very cool.

The main Phunt is a 50k ~ 2 loops in the Fair Hill State Natural Area in northeastern Maryland. There is a 25k option ~ one loop, and a 11k option - 5miles of the first loop and then a 2 mile cut over back to the finish/starting line.

Originally we signed up for the 25k but I had some IT Band issues during our half marathon in December so we dropped down to the 11k option. We were also super lazy for 3 weeks and didn’t start running again until last week - oops!

I've never run the trails in Fair Hill before and if I had, I probably would have given up my spot to someone else this time around. We were warned that they were hard and hilly but I had no idea what I was getting myself into! Combine my lack of preparation, knee pain from my IT Band around mile 2, and tons and tons of hills that just seemed to go up up up up and I was struggling… more than struggling, I was just WALKING lol.

In my defense… here is the elevation graph – it is a beast, espec. after not training hills at all since September! It isn't much of a defense, we were almost the last people done with the 11k lol but o well... we still made it!!

By "we" I refer to myself, my nice co-worker who was kind enough to stay with me, and her boyfriend - who waited for us a few times throughout the course to make sure we made it ok.

Where was Lukas you ask? ... Running the 25k!! Again... refer again to our lack of preparation and the elevation graph above... yep, he still successfully completed the 25k ~ longest he has ever run and espec. crazy long considering it was a hilly trail run! So proud of him!

I finished in 1:52... shameful, I know. Lukas finished in around 3:25 ... fantastic based on the circumstances and really for me, that would have been a fantastic pace I probably could not have hit with training even! (Slow me = super slow on trails = crawling up hill :))

Well... all of my 2013 goals have gone down in a blaze of glory... or shall we call it "IT Band induced pain" ~ ugh. The last 5k of our December half had me in quite a bit of IT band pain on the side of my knee, so much that I was limping afterward and was super grateful for the free massage just so I could handle the 2 hour car ride home. We were pretty lazy for the rest of December which was good to rest but I didn't take that time to strengthen and stretch at all, so I still had IT band pain issues when we did the trail run in January. We tried training up for a full marathon in May but after having major issues on a 6 miler in Feb, it is now to the point that I can only run about 2-3 miles outside before the pain starts.

I am being smart about it and not pushing it ~ I gave up my marathon goal and am coming to terms with the fact that the 1/2 marathon trail option isn't going to happen either. Honestly I just want to be able to run pain-free sometime again in the near future, I don't care about races right now, I just want to get better.

To help with that, I am going to start going to see a personal trainer once a week. I definitely have muscle imbalance problems which has caused most of the issues I've had in the past 2 years and I just need to focus on strengthening up and getting rid of those problems. My weak core, glutes, and hips are sabotaging all my hard work and I'm tired of getting knocked back down by some new pain/injury/etc.

I've been pretty good the past few weeks tho and instead of being a big whiny baby, I've been using the elliptical and running a few miles on the treadmill at work. I've been able to work on speed and endurance a bit which is nice, and am keeping myself from gaining lots of extra winter weight which is good too. Also is nice to have a break in my work day even if I only get to work out 25 minutes ... better than sitting at my desk that whole extra lunch hour!

So........ more to come on the PT situation in the future. Today is my first session after work, we'll see how it goes!

The good thing about goals is they can be changed or put on hold... no freaking out, just focusing on positive things like getting stronger and running longer in the near future!